“MAYBE we will see the miracle of Stamford Bridge,” Eintracht Frankfurt coach Adi Hütter mused on the eve of his team’s Europa League semi-final second leg at Chelsea. Germany’s fourth-best team sneaking a narrow win or a high-scoring draw against the third-placed side in the Premier League isn’t necessarily the stuff that footballing fairy-tales are made of. But the perceived gap between the sides has widened to appear all but unbridgeable since the first leg. “We need an outstanding, perfect game,” the Austrian manager said in recognition of his men's incredibly difficult task at hand.
Sarri’s decision to leave out Eden Hazard of the starting XI might not have been immediately vindicated. It certainly helped to inflict psychological damage on the Bundesliga team, however. Even without the Belgian superstar, Chelsea were rarely troubled and ultimately outplayed the Hessians, who were eventually flattered by the 1-1 scoreline. If Frankfurt fail once more to interrupt the Blues’ passing game this Thursday, with Hazard unleashed on them from the get-go and in the mood to turn ankles into jelly, a win for the hosts will be a formality.
⚽️ 2' Brandt ➡️ Aránguiz ➡️ Havertz ➡️ GOAL!
Kai Havertz scored the early opener in our 6-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt. Here's another look! pic.twitter.com/rd6JfiiwzH
— Bayer 04 Leverkusen (@bayer04_en) May 7, 2019
The visitors’ confidence has been damaged further by Bayer Leverkusen destroying them 6-1 in Sunday’s league game. Frankfurt, injury-depleted, mentally drained and rather dead on their legs, were positioned so far away from their opponents on the BayArena pitch that they might just as well stayed at home instead. The uncomfortably one-sided game bore all the hallmarks of total collapse: a season of hugely impressive consistency and serial overachievement had finally caught up with the thin, exhausted squad. We have seen this story before. In every action drama, there’s at least one minor, hugely likeable character who fights valiantly in the big show-piece battle and makes it much further than anticipated but is nevertheless destined to be overrun by the enemy as the slaughter draws to the clause.
There’s a suspicion, shared by many in Germany, that Frankfurt might simply be too tired to upset the odds for much longer. The psychology has changed as well: with three or four games to go, their sensational campaign now hangs thrillingly, precariously in the balance. It could yet deliver silver-ware and a first-ever Champions League qualification in one of two ways but also see them slip down the table and miss out on European football altogether. The recent trajectory is not encouraging. They have only picked up two points from their last four Bundesliga games, which in turn makes it much harder to pretend that the humiliating loss at Bayer was only a one-off failure to turn up, a mere lapse rather than a complete breakdown.
️ #Hütter:
"We'll give everything for 90 minutes – or maybe even more – to get to Baku. When you get so far in this competition, you want to carry on to the final. We'll need a perfect performance to do that tomorrow."#CHESGE #SGEuropa pic.twitter.com/vC1rgKjhv2— Eintracht Frankfurt (@eintracht_eng) May 8, 2019
Hütter has naturally tried to frame it differently. His men were always going to struggle to perform in a match sandwiched between the biggest pair European games since they won the precursor of the Europa League in 1980, he implied this week; when numbers and energy are this low and minds are elsewhere, a team reliant on near-maximum levels of effort can get beaten heavily on occasion. But that’s not who Frankfurt really are, he insisted at the pre-match conference on Wednesday. “I’m 100 per cent sure that the real team will turn up,” the 49-year-old predicted. “You could see in the Liverpool game what it means to believe in yourself.”
Fortunately for them, they won’t have to solely pin their hopes on metaphysical powers. Midfielder Sebastian Rode, one of the key cogs in the system, will return after missing out due to injury at Leverkusen to provide protection for the defence and destructive expertise in midfield. Up front, Frankfurt should look much more dangerous as well: Ante Rebic (suspended in the first leg v Chelsea) will provide foil for star striker Luka Jovic, and there’s even a chance that the most effective attacking trio of the group stage will be reunited: Frenchman Sebastien Haller has made the squad after a suffering an abdominal strain that has coincided with his team’s poor run.
It will still require a colossal effort to get past the Blues; Frankfurt must draw on the last reserves and need no less than the perfect game. But the Eagles have swooped on their doubters so many times in 2018/19 that it would be foolish to write them off just yet.
